White's Main Detecting Forum

I wanted to share a great success I had today with a very good looking 6000 Di ..xxxx that had major operating problems..

I had recently aquired a dead White's 6000 Di Pro SL with no idea what was wrong with it. The previous owner had said " the thing would sound off on a quarter tossed on the ground for a sweep or two, then would just not work at all, with ANY metal. Sounded very choppy n cut out first then nothing". Wouldn't pick up squat! not even my pick up truck!!?? YIKES/..

I took it home n just browsed through the .pdf file from the White's web site for that model to refresh my memory on how to 'drive it' again as it has been three years since I lost my Eagle 2 SL 90 ( pretty close as far as running the Pro Di 's I had guessed.)

Tossed some fresh C cells in the alkaline pack, gave all the connections for power a look over , everything was clean, fired it up, sure enough the mans' description was right on the money, erratic, fading in and out , pick up a quarter once then barely pick it up and respond and it sounded like how a machine might run when your batteries are about totally dead , detuning,and YUK ! the BATTERY check showed 100% full. A volt meter confirmed battery pack a full power.

So I proceeded with "open heart surgery" on the thing as I had absolutely nothing to lose. Disassembly seemed a little easier than a Classic ID I had just finished doing all of the Mr. Bill Mods on.

Inside were a dual layer set up circuit boards with the lower board a few inches shorter in length with plastic stud stand off posts combining the two boards.
Gave it the old timers trick of smelling around with the nose, sure enough, there was a smell of a burnt component. ( Ya gotta love the old timers tricks!)
Started looking around with a few really bright flashlights and WELL LA !! a blown to bits small capacitor on the larger board, just below where the speaker magnet comes kinda close to touching the top board when assembled and towards the front of the spkr. magnet area.

About the size of half of a green pea, the board didn't even have a "C 123 or capacitor number (example .. ie 123.. ) but it DID have a " + " indicating the polarity of the cap.. and a painted circle in white paint indicating the cap placement during inital fatory assembly, ne thing I noticed the else where on the board where little ceramic caps were, had an elliptical paint mark, not a perfect little circle so, I ruled out the destroyed cap wasn''t a typical lil ceramic disk type.

. From here I went on ( and I didn't like to assume ANY component values but had no choice) a few educated guesses. First I looked around on the rest of the entire two boards hoping to find the same circlular paint mark with a lil "+" towards one of the two solder holes....well, well,, I got lucky AGAIN, and on the big board closer to where the incoming main power talons start feeding in the battery power sat a little shiney butter scotch colored cap that matched all the right left overs of the one that went "Chernobyl".

Ok, going by this other good cap the markings showed the negative side leg with a long vertical black strip painted on it with the markings 35v 1uf .. Continuing to look for ant more with the same looks, I found one more capacitor ...makings on it were the same 35v 1uf or one micro farad and on both of them were also the manufacurers mark of a capitol "M"

Again since I did not have a service manual or any specs. for the exact cap. value. I thought I would take all the above info. and just search else where on some of my pieces/parts and circuit boards computer leftovers etc... the closest I could find was a little can shaped capacitor labled 50v 1uf .... 50v only 15 volts difference on my assumed cap. value but still at 1uf good deal. So I went with it. Desoldered it off the ( and it was an old 486 IBM home pc board I found it on.) scrap board after looking at the top of the can shaped cap. (( another old timers trick it to look very closely at the top of can caps like this to check for any visible swelling..especially near power supply sections of any type electronic designs.... NOT saying that my blown up cap. had anything to do with the pwr. supply of the metal detector... like a soup can that had frozen then sat out in the sun or thawed swelling and poofing up the top of the can, rounding it off.}} No swelling . Commensed with canibalizing the cap..

Prep 'ed the little can cap. legs, straighted them out a little and kinda eye balled if this different size would be crunched by the speaker magnet.. the clearance looked ok but maybe giving it a forward tilt when re soldering it in just to make sure of not crowding the transplanted part or shorting it out on the magnet etc...

Found the middle leg of the potentiometer for the SIG. BAL. as I started re assembly... COLD solder joint and leg was totally off the pot. leg.. cleaned it up , gave it some good resoldering, checked the other legs. OK. RE ASSEMBLED the machine..

Drum roll for the power up !!....................... AND SUCCESS !!!! the 6000 purred like I had always remembered the 6 DB.. /.. 6000D Di etc... days... with a familiar steady THRESH HOLD humm....OFF to the TEST GARDEN.. flying colors! excellent depth, pinpoint, tuning ground ballancing,, discrimination. NO MORE irratic, chatter ,fading...not responding....or ANY of the symptoms from before.. SUPER!

I Ran it for about two hours. lunch break.. then went to a close by little park that isn't really very old but found 5 new pennies one at bout 4" and dug up a few old pull tabs and the analog needle meter read out was RIGHT on the money in TABS....dug up a 1 & 1/2 inch NAIL up at about 10 11 inches in all metal mode meter was right on the IRON area low on the meter... great!! Found one newer nickle, and ran out of sunlight for the day.

I feel I got lucky somewhat with alot of missing data, no specs. or component values to go by etc... But now have a very nice running, machine although older, I KNOW I will be having some good finds this year because I have depended on White's' excellent detectors since the early 1980's when, after the BFO days of the late 1970's when I was officially hooked on TH'ing. I started out with the 1DB TR about 1980 and built up coin collections, selling my entire collection off once I had saved up enough money to combine my funds and upgrade to the top of the White's line of detectors.

That's a cool description of a "Shoebox" type...lol! you will have ta 4give me some, I've been outta the loop for a little while, but getting back into the swing of things.!

WOW .. pardon the double puns..! Anyway I did have a hip mounted 6db, White's years ago and that was really my first NICE machine that actually got some really good depths though ya had ta swing it pretty fast, it was such a good detector, I got a good friend of mine into TH'ing bout a year after alot of great silver finds etc.. I sold it to him n I think I bought a Teknetics 8500 "B" series so we both could hunt ( this was some where around 1982) if I remember right..

And yes, I am happy to have a decent machine just in time for the weather to improve and get to hunting.
I've ran this 6000 repaired. for a few more hours today n found some new coins etc.. n haven't had the opprtune yet to get to a few of my REAL good places so I figure this is my warm up practice for the serious stuff.

I had a few set backs couple years ago n lost my most fav. an Eagle 2 SL 90' . I especially miss the Eagle's AUDIO target ID.. where it would raise in pitch for the higher the coin target..AND with some setting adj. could also get the all metal pinpoint to raise in pitch too.. And I need to remind myself the Eagle's ability to custom build two user programs however you wanted,,

The very DAY I modified the middle range of about numbers 44, 45, and 46 (in one of the user programs I custom built, with NOTCH ACCEPT/REJECT....n accepted those numbers...) I found a ladies rose gold wedding band!! Man, that was a mind blower! but I will save up n find another one (Eagle2) I'm sure

I'm a White's favorite also.. I have had to send only one back for a problem that happened with in the first 100 hour "burn in" time frame. It was a LONG time ago and was a White's 1DB (TR machine) and William1 you are right, White's fixed 'er up n I had it back in no time, up n running 100 %.

I just happened upon this forum so, Good Morning fellow history buffs and the downright greedy!

Halo,
Between your forum handle and the timing of me finding your post just when I needed it, are proof to me of a higher power and that you, my friend are heaven sent.

I have been using my 6000 Di Pro SL since the nineties when I bought it new. Easy for a newbie? No, but be patient and learn the machine, the audio and meter and it will find the 'good stuff', and many times deeper than people using the newer digitals that have just gone through the area. Heavy? Yes, but hey, I've got arms like Popeye now.

Ok enough of that stuff, the real reason I had to respond is that I believe my 6000 did the same thing! In my case, mine had been stored in an indoor closet, battery case with batteries removed, stored separately in the carrying case and had not been used in about 8 months. I have always done terrestrial searches but wanted to try beach searches since moving near the ocean. Yesterday, I load 4 brand new coppertops in the battery case, turn it on and begin my ground balancing here in the yard and just playing with the unit before heading to the beach. Within a few minutes I start to smell that, familiar to me, burned electrical smell of ozone. I turned it off, removed the battery pack, and it was literally smoking from the inside, coming out of the empty battery housing area. So now, I figured that for whatever reason, I've fried my favorite, no longer made, detector with no idea of how or why? I checked my battery installation and all batteries were in correctly.

After searching around the web for possible repair places and pricing estimates, I stumbled across your posting in this forum. I dismantled the unit and sure enough, what I believe from your post's description, the exact same cap was now a charred stump on two legs, with no clue to it's value. I re-read you post and found the other two caps with the same 'board painting'. (See pics attached) They both mount on the big board next to IC chip locations - one to the right of U19, and one below the left corner of U17. My unit is using similar to yours, butterscotch colored, dipped caps. Also like yours, they are 35 volt - 1 micro-farad with a printed stripe down one side with a plus + mark showing polarity. The only difference seems to be, mine is marked with the letter A, not M. I am not sure if that is a manufacturers mark or possibly the cap's range code. Possibly some type of mil-spec code. Anyway, now I am looking for a cap, and will try the fix. I'll let everyone know how mine does. Hopefully with the same success.

Two questions for any out there who may know:
1. What does this particular cap do in the circuitry? (noise filter in battery circuit?)
2. What caused it to fail all of a sudden after so many years of use? (Worried about the root cause, and a repeat or possibly worse damage to circuitry).

Finding that first coin after an old detector has been brought back to life is a really nice feeling as you know. I have managed to bring back to life maybe 2 or 3 dozen detectors.
I can imagine how great the feeling was for some of the early Detector designers like Charles Garrett, designing and building a detector then going out and finding coins and rings etc With it...... euphoria almost.... Detector Designers are "Gods" to me. The guys must be very clever to design Detectors..

Anyone here willing to work on a detector? I recently picked up a blue box 6000 Di Pro that is so clean it must have been an indoor demo unit only, problem is that it won't power up with new batteries. I have emailed White's service twice with no reply.

Just food for thought. Take a multi tester and check the voltage coming out of the
battery pack which I believe should be 6 volts. These packs do go bad.
Then make sure pins inside battery compartment are not pushed in and
not making contact. These can be bent out a hair if not making contact.
Hope this does it for you. GOOD LUCK! !!
silverseeker2